Brands of Crazy
by Perks of Being a Whovian
Summary: Violet gets advice from an unexpected source which leads her to reconciling with Tate.


**Disclaimer: I don't, nor do I claim to own American Horror Story or anything surrounding it. **

**Author's note: I've wanted to write an AHS fic for so long and this story just appeared in my head one day so… I'm not American so I'm not sure whether all of the language I've used would be correct (all I know is that you should say 'vacation' rather than 'holiday' and 'mom' instead of 'mum') so please feel free to correct any of it and suggest improvements in the reviews. I published this before but accidentally deleted it, so... Please, please review!**

**Brands of Crazy**

Sitting in the blackened basement beside her lifeless body, Violet clutched a lit cigarette in one hand and a butcher's knife in the other. Her corpse's skin was fading to a shade of silver, she noticed, with the flies upon her flesh multiplying and each one fattening to twice its normal size, but despite all the horrors that she was witnessing, there was just one thing that truly terrified her: her expression. She looked agonized. She looked terrified.

Agony. Terror. Those were the last things she ever felt as a living, breathing human. The last thoughts she ever thought were ones of regret. The last words she ever spoke barely qualified as words, just gargled slurs incoherently spluttered as Tate desperately tried to revive her, tried to make her throw up the pills, tried to make her heart pump and her lungs fill and her brain function. He was too late. She took too many.

With the knife, she carved a single word into the rigamortis-ridden corpse's forearm: 'TAINT.'

She was snapped out of her morbid daze by the sound of approaching footsteps, too light to be her father's and too heavy to be her mother's, but she'd gotten so used to the constant whirr of almost-life in the house that she felt no need to turn around and face whoever had decided to pay her a visit this time. All she hoped was that it wasn't Hayden: even death couldn't change her dislike of that snide, manipulative woman.

It certainly wasn't someone that she'd expected to be see. Raised eyebrows. Smirk firmly in place. Glare fixed on her confused expression. .

"Why are you here, Chad?" she sighed, dropping the knife and stubbing out her cigarette on the concrete floor, watching the coppery-orange light of a few faintly-glowing embers fade to nothing.

"I'm here on... someone else's behalf," he whispered mysteriously with a hint of sarcasm, and then stared impatiently at her as he waited for her to deduce who he was talking about. A flicker of panic ignited in her eyes as she realized.

"No, no, no, no. Not him."

He smiled, then, a full and cheery smile. "If by 'him' you mean our favourite little mass-murderer, then yes. Him."

Her voice was frantic when next she spoke: "I told him to go away, he should have gone away." The frightened girl shuffled away towards the basement walls, but collided with them and unceremoniously dragged herself back into a sitting position.

"But Violet, he _did_ go away. Think of it like him sending a postcard to you while he's on vacation. I'm the postcard!"

"In that you're cheap, disposable, tacky and slightly disappointing?" she smirked, watching Chad's face fall.

"Meow," he hissed, and they descended into an uncomfortable silence.

After an awkward few minutes had passed, she spoke once more: "W-why did he send you?"

"He wanted me to tell you that he's sorry, and he misses you, and he wishes he could take back everything that he did," he said simply, voice cold.

"And that's it?"

"That's it."

She exhaled loudly, stood and then began gesturing wildly with her hands as she shouted. "It's not enough. After everything, that's not enough!"

"It should be!" he roared back, images of his own past flickering through his head as he spoke.

"No it's not, what are you _talking_ about?" Violet hissed, her glare vicious and piercing.

"You're stuck here forever, Harmon, whether you like it or not. You can either accept his apology and be happy, or reject it and be bitter. _Forever_. So it has to be enough, because forever's an awfully long time to be pissed off at a guy, trust me. I'd know..."

"You and Patrick?" he nodded but remained silent. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. 'S not your fault if he's a narcissistic asshole with an unhealthy obsession with leather and incredibly poor taste in soft-furnishings," he laughed mirthlessly, before his voice took a serious tone. "Please just talk to him."

"Why d'you care if I do?"

"I think that maybe it's the negativity binding us to this house, Violet, and if you're angry and Tate's sad then you'll just be adding to it. I don't want to be trapped here and neither do you so… spread a little sunshine!" In the final few words he took on a singsong voice and did a little jig.

"It may have escaped your notice but I'm not a particularly sunshiney person," she murmured, walking towards her corpse again and shifting it slightly so that a few of the flies tumbled lifelessly off it. In the process she acknowledged that her eyes had almost completely rotted away and the structure of her skull was becoming horrifyingly obvious. .

"No, I don't suppose you are… I'll let psycho have a word with you and see if he can change your mind!"

Before she could utter a half-hearted protest, Chad had disappeared, replaced by a person she wasn't entirely sure she'd ever want to see again.

"Hello," he said simply, face completely expressionless. Tate did not make any attempt to approach, but rocked back and forth on his heels with hands clasped behind his back as his gaze met Violet's. Although it wasn't necessary for her to breathe anymore, she still had to consciously regulate the movement of her lungs during that moment of silence and her lifeless heart seemed to reawaken as his glare pierced right through her skin. "Hello?" he repeated, his voice a mixture of sarcasm and sadness.

"I told you to go away," she hissed through gritted teeth.

"I told you not to die. I _begged_ you not to die. We don't always get what we want."

"I. Told. You. To. Go. Away," she repeated, spitting each word.

"I waited for you, Violet," he breathed, taking a single step towards her.

She took a step back. "You waited _two_ days!"

"Two days too many."

She turned away and whispered tiredly "Just be quiet. _Please_."

"Why?" he asked, his voice oddly childlike.

"Because I need to think and it's so loud here," she tapped on her head with her finger as a thin layer of tears grew across her eyes, "all the time!"

"What d'you mean, Violet?" he wondered aloud, suddenly concerned. Although he knew not to approach her, Tate still wished to walk forward and take her hand like he used to or pull her into a hug.

"...How can you be in this house and _not_ go mad?" she murmured, sounding so vulnerable, so worried, so scared about the weak hold she had on her own sanity.

"You're asking me? You're asking the murderer how not to go crazy?"

She paused. "Tate... that's weird."

"What's weird?" he enquired, tilting his head.

"You say 'murderer' like it's a bad thing."

"Isn't it?"

"Psychopaths don't feel guilty about what they do. They just do it," she snapped, but her voice had an undercurrent of vague curiosity. Subconsciously, she began to step towards him until they had about four feet separating them. She held her head high and stared at his features the way a scientist stares at a dissected animal: interest tainted with slight pity.

He looked as if he was disappointed in her, then, and as he spoke his voice was quiet and soft. "Maybe I'm not a psychopath."

"You shot up a high-school. You're obviously a psychopath," she said bluntly but not in a deliberately unkind way.

"I think everyone's their own brand of crazy," he explained, "Why label it?"

"What's my 'brand of crazy', then? I want to know."

"I said before, Violet, there's no point in labelling it... It's like in perfume, they mix up all the scents until you can't tell one from another. They give it some stupid name like-"

"Like 'Elevation'," she whispered dramatically.

"Exactly like that. They give it a stupid name and let that represent every element of it. Really, though, it's still a thousand different things combined." They shared a few minutes of comfortable silence, where Tate remained where he was and Violet crept back towards her body so that she could engrave more words and patterns into it. At this, Tate began to speak once more; "I wish you wouldn't do that."

"What?" she murmured disinterestedly, continuing to slice a particularly elaborate motif into her calf.

"Mess with the corpse," he clarified. "If they find you, I want you to be able to have a proper funeral, open-casket... You could be buried next to me." She knew she shouldn't feel flattered, then, but there was something so oddly sweet about this morbid sentiment that she couldn't help it, despite all that he'd done and all the hatred that she was supposed to feel for him.

"What'd be the point? We're both still here, Tate. And it's half-decomposed, now."

"So what?"

She laughed softly and said "That's creepy." Although the statement could be interpreted as unkind, her mirthful tone suggested that she wasn't offended.

"Violet?" he asked, to which she replied with a vague noise of acknowledgement. "Do you feel like… Can we be together again? Please?" his voice was pleading.

She sighed and walked away from her corpse until she stood in front of him once more, this time much closer than before. "I need time."

"We have _forever_," he half-begged.

"Then you can wait a while, can't you?" she whispered, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips and a matching smile upon the face of Tate.

"I'll wait as long as it takes," he breathed, his voice much lighter than before.

"Thank you," she whispered before pulling the very surprised Tate into a hug, laughing at his confusion and basking in the happiness of that moment where she felt no resentment or bitterness in her heart for the first time in so many years. They were broken, she knew, and it'd take a whole lot of effort to put them back together. Eventually, though, they would be joyful all the time. Eventually the sun would shine through their darkness and the world would be bright once more. Eventually she'd forget the hatred she'd once felt and allow herself to be content every hour of every day until the end of her existence.

Eventually they'd find their own brands of crazy.


End file.
